Light-Driven Micro/Nanorobot for Biomimetic Optical Communication

Light sensing and communication represent a vital link in the progress of biological evolution, helping organisms to respond to their environment and carry out survival activities. To simulate this process and exploit it in engineering applications, we develop a light-driven micro/nanorobotic system. Like the natural defense mechanisms of biological vision, these robots can mimic the sensitivity and responsiveness of living organisms to light stimuli. Additionally, the development of nanotechnology and molecular communication (MC) caters to the trend of the Internet of Bio-Nano Things. However, there are still difficulties in conducting systematic research at the experimental level in related scientific fields. To bridge the gap between the simulation of MC with micro/nanorobots and the construction of an experimental testbed, a complete micro/nano-scale communication platform is built by using customized optical microscopy equipment. We use Cu2O micro/nanorobots to imitate the natural properties of molecules, since under negative phototactic motion they are suitable for being a message carrier in MC. This is similar to the behavior of visual organisms that receive external light stimuli and convert them into biomolecular signals. Information is transmitted by controlling the self-driving of the micro/nanorobots with in-situ signals. We propose three low-complexity threshold-based detectors to recover information from the received signal. Experimental results show that the light-driven micro/nanorobots can meet the requirements of multi-directional manipulation. Through the implemented miniaturized observation testbed coupled with light-driven micro/nanorobots, microparticle-based information transmission is accomplished by utilizing the properties of micro/nanorobots.